Psychosis vs Unreality
by SecretLittleKappa
Summary: The day your doctors admitted you, you hadn't screamed, or wailed. You hadn't shed a tear or even batted an eyelid. You had simply nodded and said: "Thank you."


**Type: AU (sort of). A short 'What if' scenario where Nami is a schizophrenic and is taken into a mental institution after she realises her friends and adventures are all in her head.  
Pairings: None.  
Notes: Just wanted to write a fic in second person. And get into Nami's head a bit. This was my experiment for both. Pretty light duty.**

* * *

The day your doctors admitted you, you hadn't screamed, or wailed. You hadn't shed a tear or even batted an eyelid. You had simply nodded and said: "Thank you."

.

Your therapist is a nice woman. She doesn't even mind it when you steal her watch. Kleptomania is one of the symptoms, apparently. She asks questions, some about the hallucinations (she doesn't call them that exactly, but you won't be fooled), others not, but she's always smiling, writing things down on her funny blue clipboard when you speak. She is the most beautiful person you have ever seen, and when you tell her, she laughs and thanks you. You don't tell her that she looks like one of Them though, the dark haired woman with the strange blue eyes. Robin – what the not-really-real-person calls herself. She is your favourite of Them. She always understands you. Understands everything. Talks when you want to talk, reads when you don't. She was an assassin before she joined Them – had even tried to kill you once or twice. But you don't tell the Nice Woman that, in case she stops smiling.

.

Your dreams are when you are really lost. When up is down and the imaginary is real. Tonight you're dreaming about the ocean, skimming across the waves on your wooden horse that you stole from the sky. You're searching for treasure, a strangle bauble strapped to your wrist. The arrow within it's spinning, you notice, like a broken compass and you suddenly realise you don't know where you are. Then you're standing in a white room, scared and alone, calling for help. You want to cry and you do, curling inside yourself and onto the floor. You feel something being placed on your head, and when you reach for it, you see what it is. A hat made of straw, wrapped with a red ribbon.

And that's when you wake up, because that's always when you wake up. You slip from your covers, as you do every night, to the drawer at your bedside and open its single compartment. There inside, lies the scruffy straw hat of your dreams. The only thing you keep from the Outside. And the only thing that connects you to this other world. You touch it, to check that it's real, and then you slip back into bed and go to sleep.

One day you might even find out who's it is.

.

Chopper is with you when you're eating lunch, spooning into something that tastes as bad as it looks and both of you are wishing Sanji was cooking instead. You're never alone with Them around, and even though the doctors tell you they're just pretend, a trick of the mind caused by the condition, you can't help but feel that they're real. If not here, then somewhere else. In another time, maybe. Another universe.

A man has joined you at the table today. A patient from your ward – the room across from you, in fact. You haven't talked before, so you're wary as he grins, offering you a bite of his sandwich.

"Not hungry?"

You shake your head, and not just because you hate peanut butter and jelly.

"Sure? Alright. Chouchou – grubs up."

The sandwich is thrown into the empty space beside him, flopping onto the ground. The man just shrugs and turns back to you with another grin. Turns out his name is Boodle, admitted three weeks before you after overdosing on illegal drugs. Apparently he has a companion as well. A floating three headed dog who breathes fire. Specifically a white terrier. On a strict diet of peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches.

You're introduced, and try not to laugh when you see Chopper in the background, silently looping a hoof around his ear.

.

The worst are the group sessions.

It's not the actual group you hate, or the group-leader (another therapist just as nice as your private one, with dyed blue hair and who's patient and kind enough to be a princess). It's that every time you sit down to participate, they're always there. Zoro and Sanji, arguing over something petty, because their egos are two times the size of their heads. It's not your fault that there's something in the way every time you start trying to punch their faces in. Like the walls. Or the chairs. Or this time, Sally from next door. You watch, through eyes that are not yours, as she screams, cradling her bloody face with shaking hands and you're horrified.

It's not your fault, you tell them, confused and afraid as you're pinned down and secured. But when you look around, the Them are gone.

You're given a new room. It's white and padded and empty, save for the straw hat. You've heard of this place before. 'Solitary Confinement' they call it. Strange, because you're not alone.

But then again, you're never alone.

.

Everyone is strangers. Stony faces and hard eyes, they lock you up like an animal. Write things on their pieces of paper. Asks you too many questions. Lie and tell you that everything is going to be okay. Perhaps this is what you had wanted, once upon a time.

Usopp tries to make you laugh about it at first, tries to show you the irony, and when that doesn't work, spins you some grand adventure to take your mind off things. But you don't want adventures anymore. You don't want make-believe or mind tricks. You just want it to stop. You want to be normal again.

So you start to shout, angry and hurting and hopeless. You're not real, you yell at him, over and over, squeezing your eyes shut so that maybe, when you open them again, your wish will come true. You open them again. It hasn't. So you snatch up the straw hat and thump at it, stomp on it, tear it apart until it's nothing but a battered mess, the red ribbon the only thing salvageable from the shredded remains. When you look up, Usopp's gone.

The next day you have someone take the hat away. You keep the ribbon, but he doesn't come back. None of them come back.

Eventually, even the dreams stop.

You're discharged from hospital after a month, move inland and get a job as a waitress. You rent an apartment nearby, join a netball club, date a few people. No stealing. No imaginary friends. Your life is completely normal.

But every so often, when you look in the mirror and take the red ribbon from your hair, a stranger stares back. You, but not you. Another self in a parallel world.

Those are the moments you wonder whether it's real. Whether this is the dream and that's the reality.

Perhaps one day, you'll even find out it is.

* * *

**A/N:**

**Like it? Don't like it? Either way, please review! :3**


End file.
